


Attachment to Desire

by PR Zed (przed)



Category: Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension (1984)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-17
Updated: 2011-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:49:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/pseuds/PR%20Zed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's lost so much, so many people--his parents, Peggy, Hikita-san--that he's become suspicious of good fortune.  No matter the good news, he always looks for the sting in the tail.</p><p>There have been so many stings over the years…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Attachment to Desire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missmollyetc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/gifts).



> A follow-up of sorts to [**A Moment Of Clarity**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/38554).

He's been sitting on the rooftop for hours now, legs crossed, hands on knees, back straight, remaining still as the sun crosses the sky and dips below the horizon.

 _Breathe in. Breathe out._

He tries to concentrate only on the present, on the now. On the feel of the kimono and hakama against his skin, on the smell of the lilacs from the garden.

 _No matter where you go, there you are._

He's been here ever since…He can't even think the words, in case they're not true, in case it's an illusion, a hallucination brought on by foolish human desire.

 _Suffering arises from attachment to desire. Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases._

He's lost so much, so many people--his parents, Peggy, Hikita-san--that he's become suspicious of good fortune. No matter the good news, he always looks for the sting in the tail.

There have been so many stings over the years…

* * *

 _At the start there were three of them. Three metal canisters holding three fragile human lives, keeping them in stasis, holding death at bay._

 _"This is not a permanent solution," John Emdall told him when he found out about the technology, when he begged her to let him use it for his team members, his friends. But it was better than any medical solution the Earth had to offer, a chance to salvage life from death. He took the stasis pods, and trusted Sam and McIlvaine and Rawhide to them, trusted that he could find an antidote to the Lectroid poison, trusted that he could save them._

 _Sam's pod was the first to fail._

 _It was a year after the Red Lectroid attack. Sidney was doing the daily manual check in the stasis room when the readout on Sam's pod began flashing red. By the time they deciphered the warnings in the Lectroid language, it was too late and Sam was dead._

 _Buckaroo and the whole Banzai Institute family grieved, and Buckaroo pushed even harder to find a cure._

 _Two years later McIlvaine's pod failed as well. There was another funeral, another loss, and only one pod remaining._

 _One pod, holding a life Buckaroo considered more precious than his own. One life he was in constant fear of losing if he wasn't smart enough, wasn't fast enough, wasn't brilliant enough._

* * *

He hears the door to the roof open behind him, but he doesn't turn. He knows who has sought him out, here in his sanctuary. Only one person would dare. Only one person has the right.

Eyes closed, he hears the door slam shut, hears the crunch of gravel under the interloper's feet, hears him sit down in front of him.

He takes a breath and opens his eyes, and there he is: Rawhide. Impossibly, miraculously alive, looking at him with eyes full of concern.

He is dressed as he's always dressed, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, its first three buttons undone, jika tabi on his feet. To Buckaroo's eyes, he looks as he did ten years ago. He has none of the lines Buckaroo has seen appear on his own face, lines of stress and dread and grief. But he is not unchanged. Ten years in the stasis pod have burned the flesh from him. Skin and bone is all that's left on his tall frame, his muscle has wasted away. The climb to the roof has cost him, and Buckaroo can hear the harshness of his breathing. He can see Rawhide's chest heaving with the effort.

For ten years, he's wanted nothing more than this, to have Rawhide with him, living, breathing, moving. And now that Rawhide is here, he's not sure what to say, what to ask, what to do.

He has paid so much for this one man's life that he's not certain what he has left to give.

* * *

 _Penny found him in the lab._

 _He didn't notice her at first. He was concentrating on the study he was making of the Red Lectroid stinger that John Emdall's people had acquired for him. (He hadn't asked where she'd gotten it from, and she hadn't offered the information. It was better that way.) Penny sat on a stool at a lab bench by the door, waiting patiently until he finally looked up from the microscope and saw her._

 _"I've come to say goodbye," she said. Her expression was calm, but he could hear a slight tremor in her voice. She'd learned to control her emotions in the years she'd lived at the Institute, but she could never hide them entirely. "I'm leaving."_

 _"Why?" he asked, more because he thought he should ask the question than because he didn't know the answer._

 _"I never see you," was her reply. It was not an accusation, simply a statement of fact._

 _"That's not true." He tried to think of the last time they'd talked, or shared a meal, or even slept in the same bed at the same time, and came up with only the vague impression of a passing encounter over breakfast weeks ago._

 _"It is." Penny sounded more tired than anything. "If you're not on a mission or playing a gig or delivering a lecture, then you're here, in this lab, playing God."_

 _"I'm not playing God. I'm doing research. Science."_

 _"The power of life and death is in God's hands. Not yours."_

 _"He's not dead."_

 _She didn't respond, only sighed. Then she leaned in and kissed him on the forehead._

 _"I hope you're right. I hope you get him back."_

 _"But you're leaving anyway."_

 _She nodded. "I don't want to wait. I want to live."_

 _"You'll always have a home here," he said._

 _"I know," she said, a sad ghost of a smile forming on her lips. "But I need to find my own way, now."_

 _A wave of her hand, a turn of her head, and she was gone._

* * *

"Did you dream?" It is not the first question Buckaroo would like to ask of his friend, but it is perhaps the safest.

"I don't know." Rawhide shrugs. His rich, rumbling voice is ragged from ten years of disuse.

"What does that mean?" he asks, curious about what his friend might have experienced, as he is curious about all things.

"I remember bursts of colour," Rawhide says. "Of sound. Of taste. Of pain. I remember darkness." He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, his broad shoulders rising and falling. "I remember feeling alone."

Buckaroo raises one hand slightly from where it rests on his knee, wanting to reach out and restore the connection between them, but not yet willing to do so. He's experienced the loss of this man, his oldest and best friend, once already. He doesn't know how he will survive a second loss.

* * *

 _In those long years when so much of his time was spent searching for a cure, or a treatment, or anything that will let him open up that capsule and see Rawhide's face again, there were months that went by when he could not enter the stasis room. When to open the door and see that last remaining metal pod caused him actual physical pain._

 _And there were other times when he couldn't stay away, when every night ended with him sitting in front of the pod in a full lotus position, concentrating on his breathing and the beeping of the equipment. Ended with him freeing his senses to wander the room, trying to find some sense of Rawhide in that place, some sign that he was still alive._

 _He knew it was ridiculous. He could even imagine Rawhide telling him exactly how ridiculous he was. "There ain't no way a human popsicle can talk to you, Buckaroo." He could almost see the twinkle in Rawhide's eyes._

 _But it didn't stop him from trying._

* * *

In the end, it is Rawhide who reaches out first, who restores the physical connection between them.

He places a hand on Buckaroo's shoulder, and Buckaroo is surprised at how warm it is. After so long in stasis, so long in the cold, he expected Rawhide's touch to have something of winter in it. But his palm is as warm as he remembers, his touch surprisingly gentle for so big a man.

Rawhide's hand closes around his shoulder with a brief squeeze, and then he pulls back his hand, as if he's not sure what comes next either. Buckaroo's kimono slips from his shoulder and he feels his skin exposed to the cool night air.

Rawhide's eyes narrow, and his mouth goes hard.

"That's new," he says, and reaches out to touch a scar in Buckaroo's shoulder, a dull red flaw in his skin that pains him when a storm is on the way.

"A gift from Hanoi Xan," he hears himself say.

"I hope you repaid him in kind."

"Not that day," Buckaroo says.

* * *

 _At first, he didn't know he'd been shot._

 _He fell to the ground, feeling as if he'd been hit by a two by four, but not realizing that a bullet had passed through his shoulder._

 _Perfect Tommy was at his side in an instant, leaving Reno, Pecos, and the other Cavaliers to stop Hanoi Xan's plan to steal a deadly virus from the Institute's medical lab._

 _"What were you thinking?" Perfect Tommy said applying pressure to the wound as blood seeped from between his fingers. "Standing there in sight of Xan's men with no cover to speak of."_

 _Buckaroo clenched his jaw against the pain and said nothing. Because if he told Tommy what had happened, his friend would know he was a fool. A fool who'd let a cowboy hat on an enemy distract him for a crucial instant. Who'd been caught off guard by the thought of what Rawhide would have done on this mission, how he would have provided cover, how he and Buckaroo would have crushed Xan and his minions between them._

 _Tommy must have read something of the truth in Buckaroo's eyes, because he quickly finished bandaging his arms and turned away._

 _"You have to let go of him, Buckaroo," Tommy said, his voice choked with walled off emotion. "Let go or we'll lose you both."_

 _He didn't reply, couldn't. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the pain in his arm, so very much easier to deal with than the other pain he couldn't seem to shed._

 _Years it had been now, so many years, but the pain was as raw as it had been when he had found Rawhide collapsed on the floor of the engineering wing. He was stuck in a limbo. There was no grave to grieve at, and no living man to hold. All he had was a metal tube and a read out that told him his friend was still alive inside._

 _It wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough._

* * *

He reaches out his hand, more confidently this time, and Rawhide takes it in a firm grip. Between one moment and the next, he finds himself on his knees, Rawhide enfolded in his arms, his face buried in his friend's shoulder.

"I missed you," he whispers with eyes clenched firmly shut. "I never stopped missing you."

"I'm here now, Buckaroo." Rawhide's voice sounds even more ragged now. "I've got your back."

They cannot stay like this forever. Buckaroo feels his knees seizing up, feels Rawhide's muscles tremble beneath his hand. He pushes himself to his feet, then pulls Rawhide up to stand beside him. They support each other as they cross the roof to the stairs and stumble down to the living quarters.

He doesn't hesitate, but leads Rawhide to his room, his haven, his refuge. Slowly, delicately, he strips off Rawhide's shirt, his shoes, his trousers, and pushes him to his bed. He sheds his kimono, his hakama, and eases into bed beside his friend, two pairs of briefs the only thing protecting their modesty now.

He kisses Rawhide's forehead, his right eyelid. His mouth. This final kiss is both innocent and full of promise for the future.

Rawhide opens his mouth as if to say something, but no words emerge. Buckaroo knows how he feels. Words seem inadequate for all that he's feeling, a shadow of all he's experienced.

He kisses Rawhide again, their tongues tentatively touching and merging this time. Reluctantly, Buckaroo finally pulls away. Now is not the time for this, not when they are both spent, physically and emotionally.

"Sleep now." Buckaroo strokes Rawhide's stubbled cheek, then runs a comforting hand down his back. "We'll both still be here in the morning."

"I've slept enough," Rawhide says, and draws Buckaroo towards him.

* * *

 _The first time Rawhide kissed Buckaroo was in the back country of Yosemite._

 _There were no Hong Kong Cavaliers yet, no Banzai Institute, no Peggy. They were just two young men searching the world for adventure, science, and rock and roll._

 _They'd known each other less than a year, but it was already clear to Buckaroo that he'd found a soul mate in Rawhide, a friend to last a lifetime. That night they came close to taking more for themselves._

 _They laid under the stars in their sleeping bags, discussing the latest theories of cosmology and neuroscience and theoretical mathematics, as intoxicated on ideas as other men might be on alcohol. And then Rawhide reached out, laced their fingers together, and kissed him._

 _As he opened his mouth to Rawhide's, felt their heat merge, felt an electric shock bring every nerve in his body truly alive, Buckaroo saw what more they could have. And what they could lose._

 _Reluctantly he pulled away._

 _"You mean too much to me," Buckaroo said._

 _In Rawhide's eyes, Buckaroo saw disappointment and resignation merge. But he showed no hard feelings, just nodded in acceptance. In response, Buckaroo leaned forward and kissed his cheek._

 _They fell asleep with their hands still linked together._

* * *

This time when Rawhide kisses him, he doesn't pull back. He throws himself into it, concentrating on the sensations, on being fully present in the moment.

He arches his head back when Rawhide's tongue rasps down the side of his throat. He gasps as he feels Rawhide's hand trail down his stomach, then lower. He bites at Rawhide's shoulder when Rawhide clutches his back, grinding them together. He nearly cries with relief, with the sheer perfection of it, when they both come at once.

Afterwards, they lie together in a sticky, exhausted heap, long limbs entwined around each other, both too tired to move.

But because they are who they are, they must always question, must always seek answers.

"Why now?" Rawhide asks as he caresses Buckaroo's back, his touch so gentle that Buckaroo wishes he could purr in response. "Why does this work now?"

"You mean too much to me," Buckaroo says. The same answer he gave so many years ago in Yosemite, but now it means yes instead of no. Back then it had meant he was afraid of losing Rawhide if things went wrong. But now that he's lost Rawhide once already, he knows that _not_ entangling their lives like this, exactly like _this_ , is the greater sin.

"The feeling," says Rawhide, with a grin on his face that tells Buckaroo he understands everything, "is entirely mutual."


End file.
